MASH
by angsty-queen
Summary: After the origami marriage predictor, another game came back from the 80s and became immensely popular amongst the 90s kids. Looks like Rhonda is at it again. One shot/Complete


**Disclaimer:** I do not own Hey Arnold. All characters strictly belong to Craig Bartlett.

 **Summary:** After the origami marriage predictor, another game came back from the 80s and became immensely popular amongst the 90s kids. Looks like Rhonda is at it again. One shot.

 **Couples:** None in this one, although greatly hints towards Arnold/Helga

 **Rated:** K+ (PG), but that is just a precautionary (one of my rarest ones that is not rated M)

 **AN:** I wrote this one-shot to get a feel of writing the Hey Arnold characters. Even though this is not my first fan story, I still felt that I needed to write the characters out a bit before committing myself to a chapter story, if you get my drift. Plus, I love MASH; it brought back so many childhood memories while writing this story.

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 **MASH**

Arnold Shortman walked into PS 118, but no longer in the fourth grade; he was in the sixth grade, the last year before junior high school. The previous year he had a grand adventure in San Lorenzo with most of his classmates. He finally found his parents, well more like Helga found them, entirely by accident.

Helga Pataki had been on his mind since then. He knew how she felt, when she found them, and brought him to them, that she would run the risk of never seeing him again; she even told him so. What spurred her on, however, was the thought of his happiness, at finally seeing his parents. It floored him to hear her say it, to even admit that there was some selfish part of her that did not want him to find his parents, because that would mean losing him.

It shocked her when he decided to stay in Hillwood.

Of course, his parents visited him as often as they could, and sent him post cards and letters almost every day. The relationship between Helga and Arnold had been awkward, with him trying to sort out how he felt about her, and her embarrassment at thinking she would never see him again, so she blurted everything out about how she felt about him, just as she did two years ago, on the rooftop of Future Tech Industries.

Then there was that time they had gotten lost in the jungle during their San Lorenzo trip, and he almost went over a cliff. If it was not for Helga pulling him back up to safety, Arnold was sure he would have met his demise that day. He remembered staring at her, shaking and on the verge of tears, something he had never seen from her, fearful for him and what almost would have happened, and without thinking, he held her face in his hands and kissed her.

Arnold walked down the hallways and up the stairs where the sixth-grade classes were held.

He had no idea why he kissed her, and that was the reason for the awkwardness between him and Helga. He just had to sort his feelings out and deeply think.

He entered the classroom at least seven minutes before the bell rang. Some of his classmates were there. Gerald sat next to him, to his right, and they did their signature handshake with their thumbs before his friend turned back to Phoebe, who sat behind Gerald.

Arnold frowned when he saw the desk behind Phoebe, where Helga sat, was empty. Maybe she was running late as usual. As soon as he sat in his desk, someone to his left tapped his shoulder. He looked over to see Rhonda and Nadine had moved their desks to face him.

"Do you wanna play MASH?" Rhonda asked and her friend giggled.

Arnold looked at the paper in front of Rhonda, and the word M-A-S-H was spelled out on top. He gave a questioning look at his classmate and asked, "What is the game about?"

Rhonda smiled more with her favorite red pen in hand and explained, "It predicts your future—"

"—Not this again." He groaned, causing Nadine to giggle more.

"This time it's fool-proof." Rhonda reassured. "See, it predicts if you will live in a mansion, apartment, shack, or house. It also predicts the cars you will drive, the number of kids you will have, and…" She giggled. "Who you will marry."

Arnold looked from Rhonda to the MASH paper in front of her, back up to her, several times before he shrugged his shoulders. "We got a few minutes to kill before class starts."

"Oh good." Rhonda smiled. "But first, list four car brands, starting with the one you really want to drive, two you would be okay about driving, the same for the third one, and the fourth is the one you do not want to drive."

"Um…" Arnold thought. He never really considered what cars he would and would not like to drive. He was certainly not materialistic and he would be happy if he even got to drive the green Packard. Just for amusement, however, he started naming off car brands. "Jaguar…" That was one that Gerald dreamed about owning.

Rhonda gave a hum of approval and wrote it down.

"Um…Nissan van?" He tried again.

His raven-haired classmate nodded her head and wrote that down.

"A Chevy truck."

What was a car brand he did not want to even be seen driving? He never gave it much thought, but he blurted out, "And Volkswagen beetle."

Rhonda laughed and agreed, "I wouldn't be caught dead in one of those, either." She then wrote some numbers on the bottom, one through four, and went to the right of the page. "Four colleges."

By now, the blond-haired young man knew the order and the way the game, so he said, "Hillwood University, Seattle University, San Diego State University, and…community college."

"Age you will get married." Rhonda said and then wrote the numbers eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, and twenty-four in their respective places. "Okay, it's time for the wives." She snickered. "I'll go ahead and put Helga down for the fourth person."

Arnold wanted to protest. He did not know why, but he certainly did not feel that Helga should be the fourth person. Surely, there was a person more worthy of that position, but not her. His classmate then wrote down "Lila" for the first woman and Nadine giggled more.

Rhonda placed her red pen in the middle space and explained, "Okay, give me two more names of two girls in this class that you would not have first pick of, but do not mind marrying."

"Um…" Arnold looked around the room. Phoebe was off limits, since Gerald always had a thing for her. He literally could not think of anyone else, so he turned back to Rhonda and said, "Nadine and you."

Rhonda jumped a bit, very surprised, and her cheeks grew rouge and Nadine laughed quietly beside her best friend. "Well, fine." The high-strung young woman said and wrote her name and her best friend's name down in the middle position. "But I warn you, I do not play second fiddle." She placed her red pen at the top of the page and explained, "I'm going to make a swirl and you tell me when to stop."

She did just so, and she made several swirls before Arnold said, "Stop."

Rhonda drew a line in the middle of the swirls, counted the number of times the swirls touched the line, and wrote the number next to the swirls. "Here we go." She said ominously as she used that number to count each thing on the page. When she landed on that number, she crossed out either the MASH letter, or the other predictions, and continued on from there.

Arnold frowned when all the ages for marriage were crossed out except eighteen. Who would get married at eighteen? Oh yea; young men who got in certain trouble. He was not supposed to know about the trouble his grandfather got into with his grandmother, but it did not take a genius to count their wedding date versus the date they were born. Although he knew his father was their only living child, he could not bring himself to ask about what happened to the other child they were supposed to have at eighteen.

More and more were crossed out, and the remaining were circled. The final one was the spouses, and Rhonda had already crossed out Lila, based on the number. Arnold did not feel bad in the least; he actually felt relieved when the redhead was crossed out. Finally, Rhonda crossed herself out, and the remaining name was Helga.

"Oh no!" Rhonda exclaimed as she put her red pen down, now done with her predictions. "Arnold, you just have to accept this as it is, because I am not going to redo this over and over again." He knew she was referring to the marriage origami predictor. "Now, this is the way it goes….You will live in a house, you will drive a Nissan van, and that's good because you will have four children. You will attend Hillwood University, and you will be married to Helga at the age of eighteen."

"Eighteen?!" Arnold protested. "No one gets married at eighteen anymore!"

Nadine laughed again as Rhonda tried to hold back her own laughter and said, "Apparently you knock up Helga by eighteen."

"That's in there?" He asked as he tried to look at the paper.

"No," Rhonda simply said as she handed the young man the paper with his "future" predicted on it. "But why else would you get married at eighteen?"

Arnold accepted the paper, looked it over, and said, "It's not for sure, though."

"Just watch yourself around Helga." Rhonda giggled as her and Nadine moved their desks back into their respective positions. "Make sure you watch yourself as well, Helga."

Arnold jumped and looked beside him at a rather irritated-looking Helga. She still had her blond locks tied up into pigtails, her bow was still in her hair, but only Arnold knew that, for she wore a cap over it, and she still sported some pink clothing article. The blond-haired young woman looked at the paper her crush held in his hands and huffed.

"Mash?" She said with a roll of her eyes. "My sister played that back in the 80s and none of it came true. It's a stupid game, princess."

With a flick of her hair, she walked to her desk behind Phoebe and sat down with a plop. Arnold looked back at the game, and when no one was looking, stored it in his backpack. He would not mind marrying Helga; not at eighteen, of course, but he certainly would not mind marrying her.

Arnold smiled to himself as class began and he started writing notes, now imagining a future held on the game predictor. He inwardly laughed; he would have to admit, he really liked Helga.

 **The End.**

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 **AN:** Yea, I know it's short, but like I said, I'm trying to get a feel for writing out the characters of Hey Arnold. I'm sorry if this story was not what you expected it to be.


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